Well you see Jim I was not involved in folk music, by any definition, between about 77 and 95. In 77, when I decided to buy a plexiglass gibson and die my hair blue, people had been calling the likes of Cat Stevens and Al Stewart 'folk' for a long decade - since Dylan et al, or maybe their agents, had first blurred the word.

I only re-entered the scene properly in about 2000, at which point I noticed the records on the shelves labelled 'folk' in HMV, what Mike Harding played on 'Folk on Two,' what people were singing in 'folk' clubs, and what was being reviewed in 'folk' magazines. Hmm, I thought - the line's shifted even further west than it was in 77.

And it's moved even further since then.

I'm 100% behind the 54 definition - it describes something of enormous cultural importance (though I wish they'd added a clause to remind people that the oral tradition should always be seen in context with the written and, later, recorded systems). I want to UN-blur the line. So people are able easily to spot the 'trad ABV' in any modern interpretation, and so find their way back to the well.

Like you, I want to a unique label to go on this tin - but for me 'folk' won't work any more, because too many people think it means something else.

I'm trying to do the same thing as you, and for the very same reason. But I'm hacking my way out of a territory where David Grey and Robert Plant actually ARE 'folksingers.'

Tom